Platformers have a special place in our hearts. Somehow, we don’t seem to ever get bored of them. After having played tens of hours of Splatoon 2, it was time for a change of pace. We went ahead and asked for a review copy of Slime-san for Nintendo Switch. And boy, did we hit a home-run.

Story: A slime minding his business

Slime-san for Nintendo Switch isn’t a story-driven game. The core concept relies on the great platforming gameplay. However, there is a story to be told.

Slime is minding his business, as he, one day, is swallowed by a big worm. From this point on, his adventure begins and you have to help him find his way out of this bizarre world inside a worm.

In total, there are five worlds with 20 stages each. Every world has one boss battle, which are all pretty fantastic.

The game itself is pretty hard — and you’ll notice this immediately in the first world; after each level, the difficulty gets bigger and bigger. The hardest part is not finishing a level, but collecting items. Later on, you have to collect keys and control a ship. Yes, it gets quite crazy.

Gameplay: Deep & satisfying

If you’ve played Super Meat Boy, you pretty much know what to expect from Slime-san. It’s a very cool, retro-inspired platformer, that is also quite challenging, but very rewarding. The platforming in this game is tight, the world you explore is bizarre; and the content, oh boy, the content — there’s a lot of things to do. You’ll be busy for hours to come.

The controls in Slime-san for Nintendo Switch are perfect in any way. Thankfully, there aren’t too many skills you have to use besides jump, dash, slime through obstacles and enemies. The slime-function also slows down time, which is useful in certain areas.

With the controls working so well, the game feels fair most of the time. Make no mistake: You’ll die a lot, but it’ll be mostly your fault.

The replay-value, as mentioned, is high. Every game screen has one item to collect, an apple, to be exact. You don’t have to collect it; if you like, you can simply rush through each level directly to the exit. Completionists, however, will want to get each and every one of them. We tried to get some apple, but it gets quite hard later on because a wall of acid appears and marches towards you, making collecting apples not easy.

Besides the apple, there are secret exits scattered through the stages, pretty much like in GoNNER.

Audiovisual presentation: Charming retro style

Fabraz, the developer behind Slime-san, chose a pixelated approach that consists of only five colours. Although the colour palette is limited, the game doesn’t look boring at all. The limited colours even bring an advantage to the table: You can easily see what poses a threat to you.

Quite a big contrast to the levels is the town, which is beautifully animated and feels really lively. Every character is distinct, weird and somehow charming.

A game like Slime-san obviously needs a kick-ass soundtrack. A number of well-known chiptune composers are on board, who did a great job creating music tracks that fit so well with the gameplay.

Final words about Slime-san for Nintendo Switch

If you adore tight platforming and love to come back to play a game over and over again, Slime-san for Nintendo Switch is the perfect title for you. Not only has the game 100 levels that you can explore multiple times, there is even a new game mode waiting to be unlocked, expanding the game further.